Jesus Is an Anarchist

5. Tax
Collectors are Sinners!

A further
demonstration that Jesus considered the institution of taxation to be
unjust is given in the below story:

Matthew 9:9-13: As
Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax
office.

And He said to him,
"Follow Me." So he arose and followed Him.

Now it happened, as
Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and
sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples.

And when the Pharisees
saw it, they said to His disciples, "Why does your Teacher eat with tax
collectors and sinners?"

When Jesus heard that,
He said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but
those who are sick.

But go and learn what
this means: 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice.'

For I did not come to
call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." (See also Mark 2:14-17;
Luke 5:27-32.)

It's important to
point out here that Jesus actually made a stronger case against the
unrighteousness of tax collectors than the Pharisees originally had in
questioning Jesus's disciples about it: the Pharisees actually separated
the tax collectors from the sinners when they asked "Why does your Teacher
eat with tax collectors and sinners?"

Yet when Jesus heard
this He answered the Pharisees by lumping the two groups together under
the category of sinners – thus: "For I did not come to call the righteous,
but sinners, to repentance."

Yet since this is the
story of Matthew the tax collector being called to repentance by Jesus we
will do well to ask how it was that Matthew obtained repentance.

The answer: By first
giving up tax collecting! And from this beginning Matthew would thus go on
to become one of Jesus's twelve disciples.